Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

This will be mostly a WvW and PvE perspective on this new class, and it’s potential.
Let me start of by just being gratefull we get to see this class this early on and saying personally for myself i love A-Net being open with it’s community.
Now, for the class itself i will make a few points, i’ll try to keep this post structured so it’s easy to go trough as i hope to give some possible and usefull feedback.

Weapons:
Ok so let’s start of with the current weapon options, i’m not gonna discuss any possible future aditions to the class, just the ones that are in play now. But first i would like to get on something really important. The limit of having 1 weapon equiped and no weapon swapping so far. I personally think this is a bad idea in it’s current state.
There is a big problem with the revenant staff and mace and axe lines where they can’t be used if any range is required, and often this is not known up front. I’ve had a few events where i couldn’t do much if i build melee, because the ground was cluttered with aoe. And the hammer feels like it’s to ranged atm to justify 1 weapon for the spec. There is nearly no disengage. I know the whole mechanic of switching legends is supposed to be swapping things enough, but it’s not especially since you use your weapon skills more then any others.
Hammer:Before i get into the skills, can i just say, the feel of this weapon is amazing. It feels really different and awesome. As before mentioned it needs disengage, but for the rest it’s a fine weapon that cracks out some amazing skills.
Hammer Bolt: Ranged auto for hammer, yay, as i said really cool, however if it’s have to say something it’s that i’m trowing a HAMMER projectile. So if it goes trough a fire field, i think my opponent deserves a fiery hammer to the face. That’s just something that would be cool tough, i’d just imagine a projectile arrow behaves different then a hammer when flying trough fire.
Coalescence of Ruin: Visual and mechanics (3 waves, are awesome), maybe the one furthest from the revenant should cripple? Seems like skill that would do more then just do damage when you see the animation.
Phase Smash: Love it, I especially love that you get your boons from the melee range AOE fields without risk :p. Also the chill is nice. Best skill on this weapon atm.
Field of the mists: I like the idea of a mobile block wall, i just don’t know if it’s the place, but if you change skill 5 sure. One big problem with it is that it jumps with your phase smash, basicly breaking the tactical play imo and not allowing you to combo your field and blast finisher.
Drop The Hammer: This one is hard for me to get, it’s way to slow, therefor hard to aim, so easy to get out off even for npc’s… and takes the place of a knockback this class really needs on the hammer. Turn the hammer around, make it smash people away from the caster and i’m all for it. Or at least speed up the animation 3 times of what it is now.
Staff:
While i know some people are really excited to wield the scythe staff on revenant, atm i find the weapon a bit boring, and the worst on revenant in terms of look atm.
As cool as spirit hammers flying to your target is, so uncool is hitting something with a stick. When i think of melee staff combat i think of something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxTvDtU8VaY
Now of course the revenant is not an eastern warrior, but at this moment it feels no different then a hammer in the basic attacks, and in my opinion as an animator, that’s a bit of a problem.

Rapid Swipe-Forcefull Bash-Rejuvenating assault: A bit meh, didn’t even notice the heal or whirl till i read the skill description, bit underwhelming.
Punishing Sweep-Debilitating Slam: While i like the experimentation with the 2nd skill also having 2 parts, staff skills are imo hard to hit and i’ve often found myself missing the weakness due to it being on the second part. Especially vs players.
Warding Rift: Good skill, but pick this one or Renewing Wave, or mix em together.
Renewing Wave: Eh, bit useless. Either combine with Warding Rift or make a field we can blast of.
Surge of the Mist: The only cool skill on the staff imo. Good gapcloser, good skill overall, hard to hit but hitting it feels good.
Other then the animation of the first 2 skills i feel the staff lacks an extra skil. Renewing wave being a damaging and healing field would help.

Mace/Axe:
Overall a cool weapon set, seems to rely more on condition damage so i ran it with Condition crit toughness. Had some really fun times with it and seems to be the only thing doing a good amount of damage. Altough being melee it’s super hard due to the revenant being a paper armor class, but more on that later.

Misery Swipe-Anguish Swipe-Manifest Toxin: 2 torment and a poison attack, hell yeah. Just what i wanted from it.
Searing Fissure: Nice skill visually, a field, and a good range. Good skill overall.
Echoing Erruption: Also a very nice skill, 3 blasts, good for combo with the previous one, i even found that if you dodge back after Searing fissure then use it, you blast 3 times in your own field
Frigid Blitz: Very cool engage mechanic altough i often used it just out of range, just felt it would go further. Chill is nice.
Temporal Rift: Nice Visuals, Good that is also has torment, Pull in is way to inaffective, this skill should either cripple or really pull back.

Overall i feel Mace axe is the for the moment furthest developped weapon and i really like it. It still lacks a bit of cc and can be kited really easy imo.

Legend Mechanic:
Ok so let’s talk about legends, i’ve already said imo they aren’t enough to excuse us having the 5 first skills be locked. Now the mechanic is interesting in a way, but i feel it’s trying to hard to be different. I’m really attached to being able to pick my utilities. The swapping i’m ok with in some sense, but i feel it should be limited and not the entire bar or at least have some resemblence in what each skill does for that bar. For example utility 1 could all be combo fields. This needs structure cause it has none atm. And if i find out both my legends have a combo field and i’m not gonna be able to place it on the same key, i’m gonna be a sad puppy. On top of that, i feel personally that 5 skills/legend is to few. So maybe have a set of 7 for each legend so you can at least have a pick?

Legendairy Dwarf Stance:
I think this is atm the best legend line. It has some good skills and is pretty fun.
Soothing stone: Good heal, retaliation is nice.
Inspiring Reinforcement: Awesome visuals, Stability, Weakness to enemies, Field, check.
Forced Entanglement: Cool visuals again, usefull but misses a little damage.
Vengefull hammers: Also nice skill, good that it’s a channel, cool to manage energy with.
Rite of the great dwarf: I really like this one, defensive and stonecold dwarven visuals.

Legendairy Demon Stance:
Cool visuals again but mainly suicidal, to few reduction on the conditions you absorb.
Empowering misery: Good heal, heals more with the mechanics of the legend, nice idea.
Pain Absorbtion: Again good idea but this is where the line needs tuning, way to much self damage; especially when in bigger groups or combined with any other form of damage.
Banish Enchantment: I love boon removal, bit complicated hooking into a mechanic that really doesn’t work properly yet.
Unyielding anger: Cool skill, only if you have to give yourself a condition, let it not be cripple as a reward for charging into potential big aoe threaths…
Embrace the darkness: Very nice visually, cool idea, needs to copy conditions to foes with attacks or smth, basicly useless with the hammer. Also being that close that it’s worth using with that many conditions is insta death atm.
The problem here may be the numbers, may be more, it looks cool, the idea is cool, the numbers end in painfull death.

Legendary Centaur Stance:
Not going to go over the skills here cause this one needs allot of work imo. I like the idea of moving your skills with the tablet, and it certainly has potential, but atm all skills feel really underpowered and worthless. The heal from the tablet itself it to little, and the skills around it just don’t function well atm. I do see huge potential for WvW in this legend so i hope it becomes something nice.
One piece of feedback would be not to despawn the tablet when swapping legends, maybe have it just stay there and heal a little, or maybe have it fall on the ground not being empowered, but having to cast the tablet each time after even swapping around legends for a stunbreak, is so not worth it.

Traits:
Overall i’ve enjoyed the trait lines but i feel the skills need more work before i can really get into this all to much. Not that i didn’t experiment but overall the result didn’t get me excited.

How it plays:
I think overall everyone who tested the revenant can confirm he’s been having a rough time. The class feels really underpowered. Of course this is just the first of many tests and i have high hopes for the class. As of right now tough, while having a good idea, it feels underpowered, lacks healing and dps, and most of all lacks a bit of choice. I feel this class may get boring fast if there isn’t enough to play around with. Now i know there are still weapons and legends coming, but i’m talking about the 1 weapon locked utility model. I feel it will get old really fast and more so then other classes, there will be only few options to play it.
If you have 5 legends for example it feels like there will only be 5 options in utility and that may not be enough, especially when forcing a certain weapon onto us by not being able to swap.

Potential:
Now after all i’ve said here, i want to stress the potential i see in this proffesion. The lore seems really cool and the skill visuals already look amazing. As a WvW and Pve guy i can’t wait to play the revenant in both these scenarios when he’s finished. I’m a big fan of heavy armor classes in general.
I don’t usually go for what is normal in my builds tough, and lack of diversity would really hurt my interest in him. I’m curious of the support style play, and eager to see wich weapon can bring out the big numbers.

Oh, and i already have a themesong for my character: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1yuP5duUtw
I hope this was helpfull and i’ll be sure to post again the next beta event to follow up on this awesome guy.

Fox

p.s. I’m not a native english speaker and i’ve been testing this class all night so forgive me if i made some mistakes

I definitely got the feeling that certain weapons were paired with certain legends. This makes sense conceptually, but also makes the lack of weapon swap difficult. I felt very constrained on choosing weapon / legend combinations to make full use of a second legend.